'Binders Full of Women' vs. White House Women Treated Like 'Meat'

JOHN NOLTE17 Oct 2012

As a longtime watcher of politics for going on thirty years, I’ve seen both parties and the corrupt media grab hold of some inane nonsense in my time, but this “binders full of women” meme is so inane I actually had to ask around to understand what the corrupt media and the left was on about and why the execrable Carol Costello was labeling it the “Binder Blunder” on CNN.

I’m still not sure I understand it, but here’s the transcript from the debate:

MS. CROWLEY: Governor Romney, pay equity for women.

MR. ROMNEY: Thank you. And — important topic and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the — the chance to pull together a Cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men. And I — and I went to my staff, and I said, how come all the people for these jobs are — are all men?

They said, well, these are the people that have the qualifications. And I said, well, gosh, can’t we — can’t we find some — some women that are also qualified?

And — and so we — we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women’s groups and said, can you help us find folks? And I brought us whole binders full of — of women. I was proud of the fact that after I staffed my cabinet and my senior staff that the University of New York in Albany did a survey of all 50 states and concluded that mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America.

Why did the phrase resonate? Because it was tone deaf, condescending and out of touch with the actual economic issues that women are so bothered about. The phrase objectified and dehumanized women. It played right into the perception that so many women have feared about a Romney administration – that a president Romney would be sexist and set women back.

What?

Huh?

Whuh?

Seriously, what in the world are they talking about? The phrase “binders full of women” isn’t even awkward, much less offensive.

Oh, I get it. It’s yet another exhausting nonsense-distraction, and a childish one at that. It’s as though the Obama campaign got together with their media pals and played a game called, “Let’s come up with something dumber than Big Bird.”

You see, all through his political life, as governor of Massachusetts and as a presidential candidate, Mitt Romney truly does have an impressive record when it comes to hiring women, and because he did a superb job of laying that fact out in last night’s debate, the Obama campaign and Obama’s Media Palace Guards want to distract away from an inconvenient truth.

Well, it’s actually bigger than that. Because Obama’s record of how women are treated in the White House is objectively appalling. Obama’s own Communications Director, Anita Dunn, described the White House as a “hostile work environment“:

In an excerpt obtained by The Post, a female senior aide to President Obama called the White House a hostile environment for women.

“This place would be in court for a hostile workplace,” former White House communications director Anita Dunn is quoted as saying. “Because it actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women.”

This isn’t an isolated incident from a disgruntled former employee. Others have documented similar frustrations:

Coverage in the Washington Post and a new book by Ron Suskind has focused attention on the frustration of Obama’s female advisers. But the problem has been obvious almost since Obama took office. And while the explanations so far have blamed members of the mostly-departed boys club-Robert Gibbs, Rahm Emanuel-Obama himself is responsible for a work atmosphere that marginalizes and ignores women.